The method is simple, yet it includes putting out of the mind all images pleasant or unpleasant, and restricting voluntary movements. It is this: “Turn on the right side, place the head comfortably on the pillow, let the head fall naturally, using the pillow only to support the neck, slightly close the lips,—though this is not absolutely essential,—take full inspiration through the nostrils, drawing in as much air as possible, then leave the lungs to their own action, neither hastening nor checking exhalation. Think of the breath as passing from the nostrils in one continuous stream, and, the very instant the person so conceives, consciousness and memory depart, the muscles relax, the breath comes regularly, he no longer wakes but sleeps. It is all the effort of but a moment.” Another method in common use is counting up to a hundred on an imaginary string of beads. Often one will have lost consciousness before the hundredth bead is reached, but sometimes they have to be counted over and over, and sometimes the plan fails altogether. The immediate reason for this is undoubtedly that we have not brought the mind to a single sensation, nor succeeded in cutting off the impressions that come through the senses. Everybody has at some time used some such device for inducing sleep to visit him. The practice of imagining sheep jumping over a gate and counting them as they go is but another way of bringing the mind to a single sensation, of deliberately securing monotony and shutting out all stimuli, as scientific men call the various causes that arouse sensation in us. Such simple devices are never harmful, and are so frequently followed by sleep that they continue from generation to generation. If the impressions received through the channels of sense cannot or will not be shut off, it is useless to continue counting beads or sheep, or seeing a stream of breath. It becomes necessary to discover what it is that is back of the stimulation—what impression is so vivid and so insistent that it will not down. As Frederick Palmer says in his delightful book, “The Vagabond,” we should “take a good look at a thing before we run away from it.” CHAPTER XVIII STILL FURTHER DEVICES The sleep of a laboring man is sweet. ECCLESIASTES.